An interesting and ultimately pathetic saga of an attempted Internet rip-off scam is related in this lengthy and well-documented post on R-Squared. The author is an engineer and a blogger who has no connection to the gaming industry, other than that he enjoys playing Diablo 2 with his son and wanted to buy a couple of extra CD-keys so they could play together on Battle.net while he was out of town on business. He chose Diablo-Keys.com, after seeing low prices offered in their Google Ads, received two non-working keys, sent some complaint emails, got ignored, and things escalated from there.
Here’s a quote from the end of the piece; read the whole thing for the full story and make up your own mind about who is telling the truth.
Conclusion
So if you happened upon this because you were trying to determine whether is a scam, now you know. The scam is operated by a delusional, low-life loser who thinks the world owes him something, and has already been kicked off of both Ebay and PayPal.
Here is how the scam goes:
- He sells you a non-functioning product (but this means he is selling something that does not belong to him as someone else has already purchased the keys). You pay $5 because he claims they are new.
- You report that the keys are invalid, and he promises to investigate.
- He stalls and hopes you forget all about it.
- If you are persistent, he has his make-believe attorney write a threatening letter.
- If you continue to be persistent, he refunds your money, fires off a barrage of threatening e-mails while continue to hide behind his pseudonyms, and verbally harasses and threatens you while he has his make-believe attorney send another letter complaining about threats and harassment.